


Birds of a Feather

by StellarRequiem



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, it's happy til it hurts, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 11:16:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6326860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellarRequiem/pseuds/StellarRequiem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karen Page reunites with Frank Castle long after warning him that one more murder would make him a monster, and over the next several months, something like a relationship emerges.<br/>__<br/>Three vignettes about the development and nature of a Karen/Frank romantic relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birds of a Feather

**Author's Note:**

  * For [homesickblues](https://archiveofourown.org/users/homesickblues/gifts).



**I**

**Zero Months.**

 

Karen Page has stopped wearing heels. The _clack clack clack clack_ of them on the pavement is too loud in the dark alleys of Hell’s Kitchen on nights like these when a press pass only makes her more of a target.

Then again, on nights like these, she’s a target even without it, having gotten too close to what others would prefer to keep unseen. Which means, of course, that she’s on exactly the right track; though whether she’ll live to report her findings has yet to be seen.

Karen barrels down the alleyway, her own breathing louder in her ears than the sirens in the distance or the sharp percussion of gunfire from behind her, but not loud enough to drown out the _thud_ and splash of someone leaping from the fire escape she’s just passed. She whirls, gun raised, expecting to see the barrel of her pursuer’s weapon pointed back at her. Instead she finds a large silhouette—made larger by the way his jacket hangs around him—facing her with his hands up.

“Ma’am,” he says, “now isn’t the time.”

“ _Frank.”_

She lowers the gun, very nearly drops it, as he stalks toward her.

“Go,” he orders, placing a hand against the small of her back to pull her down the alley.

*

This is the first time she’s spoken to him since the woods. Hunkered down together on a rooftop six blocks from where they started, her arm pressed against his through his jacket, it feels almost surreal—as if nothing has changed. As if this night were still six months ago, his trial still hanging over her head, Matt Murdock’s double identity still a mystery. 

Maybe he feels the same, because he seems reluctant to let it last.

Frank Castle stands, holstering his gun somewhere hidden by the drape of his coat.

Karen says his name.

“I gotta go,” he says without looking at her, “before those shitbags get away.”

“Please don’t.”

Now he looks at her, something disparaging in his bottomless gaze. His eyes, she’s noticed, that don’t match his oft-bruised face, soft and sad and searching. She hurries to speak, rushing to interrupt his dismissal of her moral quandaries.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” she gasps, “about what I said in the woods. I don’t know why it—why he should have been different than anyone else you’ve killed.”

“Then why’d you say it?”

“Because,” she tries to keep her voice steady, resisting it, struggling with it, as it tries to fall to a whisper, “I think I was projecting.” She does that a lot, she’s told. It’s her only major failing as a reporter: she empathizes with everyone and everything.

Frank laughs at her. He has a laugh like a warzone, rough, and punctuated by sharper, heartier notes that are startling against the backdrop of his constant, growling tones.

“You. Projecting on _me,_ ” he rumbles. “What is it you think we have in common?”

“It’s not what we have in common. It’s what we could.”

Frank kneels, bending one knee to stare her down, eye to eye.

“I still gotta go,” he says again, “so if you’ve got something to say to me, you’d better spit it all the way out.”

Karen swallows.

And she tells him. She tells him about the accident. She tells him about the six rounds she’d pumped into Fisk’s crony, Wesley’s, chest. By the end of it she’s sniveling a little, and she hates herself for it.

“I keep wondering,” she chokes, “if I stand by, and let anyone else die, on top of all of that, if there’s any saving me. Or maybe I’m the kind of person that you should . . . punish.”

Frank says nothing for a moment. Just a _hmph_ noise, as if legitimately considering her guilt. She closes her eyes, squeezes them tight so she won’t see the bullet when it comes. And then he asks her, very calmly, about the accident. About how old she was. And when once she answers he grunts again and says:

“I don’t kill kids who make bad decisions. I kill murders and rapists and scum. That’s not you.”

And Karen bursts into tears.

“And Wesley?” she blubbers. Frank snorts.

“What do I care if you cleaned up some scumbag strongman? Besides,” he grunts, “self-defense.”

And Karen—always the easy crier to her never ending mortification—sobs all the harder. She hears Frank sigh, unable to see him due to the fact that her hands are over her face, and feels a hand laid gingerly against her shoulder. He squeezes, just a little, and just once.

 

 

 

**II**

**Three Months.**

 

The first time he kisses her, she initiates it. He’s got her seated on a work bench in the shed where he evidently stores his arsenal, stitching up a small gash in her arm that she’d rather not explain to a hospital. His face is inches from hers when she admits to herself, finally, that it’s not the pinching pain of the stitches that has her heart hammering in her chest, her breath coming a little fast, a little shallow.

When he’s done, he looks up at her. His hand is still on her arm. And he’s _right there_ , with those searching eyes and that little duck of his head that he does when someone looks too far into them. As he looks away from her, she catches his face in her hand. Stubble scratches at her palm. She turns him back to her. Leans in a little.

“Frank,” she starts, I--”

And then his mouth is on hers.

 His mouth is on hers and her arms are around him and his back, his shoulders, are filling up her slender hands and one of his is behind her, setting aside his needle and thread on the windowsill, and the other is pressed into the small of her back to support her as he leans in and down into her.

He kisses like he talks, hard, urgent, but he lets her break away and come back with smaller, softer, gentler kisses—a few of them before she bites into his lip and his free hand tangles in her hair. And then strokes it down. He holds her face in his enormous, calloused hand, so warm against her cheek. He smells like antiseptic and something sharp—gunmetal.

She wraps her legs around him and his other hand finds her thigh, his lips her cheek, her jaw, her neck. She lets her head fall back as he presses kiss after hungry kiss against her throat, palm cradling the base of her skull.

His thumb rubs abstract little patterns through her hair.

 

 

 

 

**III**

**Six Months.**

 

He doesn’t knock on Karen’s door so much as bump it, loudly, a dull noise she imagines is the sound of a gun-butt against the wood. It’s 12:30 am—late for him. She wonders if he’ll come to her bleeding, or triumphant. She doesn’t like what he does, but she accepts it. She doesn’t like to hear about it, or imagine it, but bleeding or victorious, she always lets him in. Matt would be so disappointed.

She opens the door to find him grinning.

“You’re a little late,” she says.

“Busy,” he replies.

“I’m not going to ask.”

“Good,” he says, flopping on his back onto her bed, sprawling across the foot of it and closing his eyes. “You wouldn’t like the answer.”

Karen closes the door and comes to lie beside him. She tucks herself beneath his arm and presses a kiss into his shoulder. He returns it, gentle and tired, pulling her face up to his. Her chin fits too well in his hand.

*

He shakes Karen awake without meaning to, tossing in his sleep. A sheen of sweat paints his forehead, and he’s breathing hard, his chest rising and falling in a ragged rhythm under her hand. He doesn’t often sleep around her. Perhaps this is why: the agony on his face could break her heart. There are crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes that shouldn’t be there, pressed into the skin by the furrows of his heavy brow. His lips are pressed together like a seal, but twitch as though he wants to grimace. He snaps his head back and forth, as if he’s searching for something, or shaking it.

Karen wants so badly to wake him, and is afraid of what will happen if she does. So she begins with a whisper—his name. And then a shout. And then she puts a hand on his broad shoulder, and shakes him as best she can.

He snaps upright, gasping.

She begins to speak and can’t. He has his head in his hands. She puts hers back on his shoulder.

“I can’t forget,” he chokes. “I forget everything else, it all . . . slips, and I can’t hold onto it. Her smile. But _this_ —I can’t .  . .”

She squeezes his shoulder. Just a little, just once. Because she remembers. Remembers the trial. What the doctors said. And she knows that this will never stop.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm now one half of a kastle trash blog over at http://queensofthekastle.tumblr.com/. I invite everyone to come jump in the dumpster with us.


End file.
